Autumn In Spring
by kanashii-bb
Summary: It's been a year since Sakura and Syaoran broke up. A year, another city, but somehow bits and pieces of their heart remain. Still, moving on is essential, and with other arms in another city, it shouldn't be so difficult, if the past doesn't interfere.


I normally dislike songfics, you could consider this one if you'd like (although there will only be important snippets of the actual song).  
>This story might be a bit difficult to follow, I've interwoven a lot of the chronological events with whatever it is Sakura's remembering or feeling.<br>To make it easier, if Syaoran appears it will either be through flashbacks or his text messages/phone call. Music will be italicized as well.

A lot of this made much more sense in my head, and now most of it is just nonsense, but they're words that couldn't leave my mind.

Disclaimer: Card Captor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.  
>The song 'Bizarre Love Triangle' belongs to New Order<br>(and I'll admit, this love triangle isn't so bizarre).

* * *

><p>The castles in his eyes have always been there, resting because its skies are certainly blue.<p>

The first time I met Ezra? Well, I was sitting at a cozy coffee shop off campus and he liked my shirt (I think it was CocoRosie, yeah, he likes girls singing about brooding matters but that don't behave that way). He complimented my hair, something about the ribbons emphasizing the pink in my nature. I'm standing still in a crowd of movement, I'm swimming in the loneliness of Austin. But the hallways are always friendly, my pearl tights hold hands with the hearts of other trendy girls who curl their hair and dabble with freedom.

You see, I'm always a girl of pen and paper. I'm always happy to hear you're OK and that your health is great. I prefer pages and not screens, hands and not animals, but recycled and not brand new. I like the color yellow and I don't spell color with that awful 'u', because first and foremost I'm Japanese-American and not English. English is the boy Tomoyo couldn't finish crying over last night, because it turns out Eriol's heart travels a lot. I don't like boys who don't tell you when the love is too much and then they leave, but not physically, and so you leave physically, because if someone has to leave, it might as well include the body (not just heart and soul).  
>I'm talking too much.<p>

Oh, but I used to live in New York and that's when the American in Japanese-American happened. Brooklyn is the city in which my eyes would love too much, and where the flushed cheeks of a boy I loved reside. There in between the sheets of music and once in a while his bed, I kissed all my sentiments into his lovely face. Face? Autumn for his eyes. His eyes often appeared a bit sensitive, like I knew he was.  
>And so because his eyes would always whisper it, I would often hold his hand and say, "Syaoran Li, I love you!"<p>

But Brooklyn is another city.

"So, Ms. Kinomoto" Professor Something doesn't look too happy, and I think that's because my paper made him cry.

"Yes, Professor?" Names aren't like glue because they never stick, I just can't remember the name of the tall man before me, even though it's sure to be on my essay. He's forgetting I'm 19 and the world used to revolve around me, so he compliments my writing, and he's hurt because I hide it.

The red ink on the last page of my essay becomes translucent with the applauding in my heart. _Perfect! You got the characterization and the development in the mood/tone of the plot_ and blah blah blah, but they're happy blah's written in a mechanical cursive my mossy eyes can't fully concentrate on because the paper is gone.  
>And I look up.<p>

"Another fabulous paper? You're definitely writing me something one day"  
>The lips mindlessly speak, my eyes are turn to the other soul of the once soul I found in Autumn.<p>

"Ezra, I've written you a thousand songs, you're just always too drunk or hung over to properly read or consider them"  
>we're walking and sometimes it's still Autumn in Spring even in Austin.<p>

Ezra is the boy I met without having to care. He said with his big, blue eyes: welcome! Welcome to this different city!  
>Listen to my songs, oh, I'm in a band! You should come see us play sometime. We haven't kissed, well, not that much. We hold hands too much.<p>

But other hands hold me back.

"I'm never drunk or hung over around you, that would be rude" there's a small cupcake stand in front of his apartment.  
>Blends of pretty pastels for me and he shoves his starving palms into the chocolate devil, not thinking because it's what he likes to do.<p>

"You're going to get fat if you keep eating like that"

"I'm a musician, my heart needs to be fat" he mumbles between frostings.

❤

_I feel fine and I feel good..._

_I'm feeling like I never should _

But then my walls are quiet again, the music has stopped because if it continues I'll start dancing, then my legs will remember and my hips will sway in the soft lips of grumpy pants. And why should I have to care?

"Syaoran, I love you, I love you more than the White album from The Beatles!"

Stop thinking, you'll cry and your make-up will be ruined.

The quilted patterns beneath my 5'5" body remain victims to all the loneliness experimented with. They're illusions of the love I memorized for three years. 1,095 days of Autumn, a lot like the other film with the pretty girl who isn't just Summer but potentially other seasons. It was the span of moments in which beats weren't just for musicians. His hands would always secure the fleeting thoughts straying my fickle mind awfully far away, and they'd reel me closer until our lips were centimeters apart.  
>I don't think his hands could reel in a miles worth of thoughts.<p>

"Are you still in love with him?"

"Uh, what?"

Damn Spring hours pulling me in closer to that New York heart, that Tomoeda heart. But it's only the other roommate, a French girl named Cecilia from California who hates France a bit less than she hated New York and so she found arms in Austin.  
>Her lips are always pink, they're small like her pearl hands, but forgiving in contrast to her gloomy crystals.<p>

"Remember that guy from last night's party? Well, he's assuming a bigger role in my fucking life, like what the fuck? I just met you, and you're asking me this? Seriously!" Her manicured hands work a quick reply to the presumptuous text message, she rolls her eyes and fetches the ringing phone, leaving the rest of the world to myself.

I'm not in love with the city.

"Hey, Sakura, some Li guy just called"

❤

"So, how about this song?"

Ezra scrolls down and finds what's playing in his heart. His heart is upbeat but inevitably drowning between pages where a bookmark should have been placed (you're messy). You see, Ezra (who is twenty-one and ruthlessly ridiculous, plays in a band, but believe it or not, there's plenty of hope) woke up feeling incomplete, his heart cut in half, one half struggling in his cage and the other dragging its bloody hands across my apartment, begging for my collaboration. And so, because blood leaves a terrible stain, I gave in and returned to the deserted sheets I used to love in.

"Syaoran Li, I love you too much"

Stop thinking, you'll cry and Ezra will see the pretty eyeliner Cecilia applied slouch about my cheeks.  
>That won't be impressive.<p>

_Every time I think of you _

"_I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue_"  
>the mezzo soprano tinges of my voice fill his thoughts and they welcome my own.<p>

"_Whenever I get this way, I just don't know what to say_"  
>the paper cranes Syaoran's gifted hands crafted for my heart held messages, and he sang one, alluding to a song for the nests of two birds nestling against one another, at some point.<p>

"I love that song" I say and he stops singing and he turns to me as we sit on a red bench.  
>The air is condensed into a fist of frothy fingers, its touch allows me a shiver most Brooklyn evenings.<p>

"I know...it's why I'm singing it" he's always been a little shy.

"Oh really? Ha-ha! Syaoran, why do you do this?"  
>And he doesn't hesitate to answer with an abrasive sincerity.<p>

"Because the instant I heard you sing this, I heard more than that, and so what I heard meant that this would be our song"

Stop it. You're not there anymore.

Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, sto-

"Hey! You really can sing, wow, um can I confess something?"  
>The look dabbling in his baby blue wondrous eyes frightens all the sentiments from my crummy eyes.<br>There's a parallel of misunderstandings.

"I'm sorry! I really am, it's just, I don't know what to think so please don't say anything regretful!"  
>And my hands block away the tears from penetrating the tension surrounding our lightly speckled eyes.<p>

"Whoa, what, no, just um, don't cry, er, what's wrong? Please don't cry!"  
>Ezra's uneasiness permeates into the lopsided lips of my unhappiness because phone calls shouldn't have to be this way.<p>

He doesn't touch me and he doesn't know what to do.  
>The sandalwood, clean smell of his living room touches the surface of my broken mind.<br>Please go away, New York.

Or don't.

"This is silly and it's stupid...but before coming here, when I lived in Brooklyn..."

Hours in which every fragment poised lightly in the formation of my heart remembered: days where Autumn and Spring found a middle ground, fields of holding hands and streets of kissing sentiments, my white-laced dresses finding the floor to nudity, fingers printing love, taxi cabs in which to cry in, and other earthly miseries found in the spirits of real eyes with which to realize the real lies of love, or two people broken by it.

"I didn't leave for him, I left for other reasons, really, it might sound like such a desperate lie considering the timing of it, but it's true. I left because my best friend wanted to move too"

He lifted the notes from the tip of his tongue but refused to sing, so he let his laptop do it for me.

_Living a life that I can't leave behind_

_But there's no sense in telling me..._

_The wisdom of the fool won't set you free_

Music settled in the background, Ezra's hands grazed my shoulders. Bare with the composition of 80s influenced feelings, I pressed against his actions. Syaoran settled in the background, blurred carefully somewhere in the feathers of my memory, lost somewhere in the dimensions of a broken heart.

There's a truth you can only find when the world is above you.  
>I didn't want to wait.<p>

And so I might have kissed Ezra because forgetting can be just as beautiful. 

_I hope you're doing well. I'll be __arriving some time tomorrow, my flight was delayed. I wouldn't mind catching up - Syaoran _

Does it matter? You're pissing me off again, Li.

It's not that I couldn't remember what I had to do, it's that awful text message from last night that I kept repeating.  
>Cecilia's guitar disappeared from my soft (obviously unpracticed, sorry Ezra) fingers, her sweet, melodious lips of profanity and unkempt feminine intents worked complaints to our landlord downstairs.<p>

"What! Yes! That's just what I said! Alright, _finally_, thank you" the phone was slammed onto the base, her fringed shoes pacing back and forth because our plumbing sucked and she didn't know _what the fuck_ she would do about her hot date tonight.

"How much, in clear estimation Sakura-dear, do boys pee?"  
>Her freckled countenance appeared by the door, I couldn't sit up from the lyrics plaguing my indecisive and ridiculous mind.<p>

"Boys? Well, I wouldn't - "

"OK, men" she grinned foolishly, infected by thoughts of pure physical desire.  
>And that was it.<p>

"If you're going to sleep with him, he'll either go before you do it, or after...so don't sleep with him, our plumbing can't be messed with any further" and Cecilia groaned at my response, knowing the truth to her hot date, well, wouldn't be as hot as initially assumed.

"Oh, Sakura!"  
>She sighed her misfortunes away.<p>

Could I relax into more memories as the music continued...

_Every time I see you falling _

_I get down on my knees and pray _

I could nearly hear his fumbling lips poorly constructing a framework of tolerant singing, and I could nearly feel the frosty weather around our intertwined fingers, and I could almost smell the Christmas bakeries down my apartment, and everything flooded the everything I tried to build away from Syaoran.

"I love you, dear, I love you most when you're near!"

"And not when I'm far?" He pouted.

"I'm sorry, I love rhyming too"

"I'm jealous" and so we kissed and I had kissed Ezra too, but I'm sure he's kissed other girls.  
>It's been a year.<p>

So why are you here?

_"I have a business meeting in Austin this week, it's for a major project our company's working on, Mother wanted me to get to it right away. I realized you're living there..." _

That's not enough, Syaoran.

"Sakura, Ezra's outside!"

Fuck! Fucking feelings! What time is it? It's 6? And I'm still sleeping? Oh no! And so the makeshift beauty appears.  
>There's that white floral lace dress, and there's the lace headband, and here are my high heels.<p>

Outside is the boy you shouldn't have forgotten.

_Where are you? - Syaoran _

Do not reply, do not reply.

It's been two hours without the loveless boy of my dreams, and yet, it's been two hours since I should have met up with him.  
>Time is the narrator and he's kept away the nightmare of happiness that a body can manifest.<p>

"I'm sorry about rushing you into this, it's just well, you know I've been bugging you about this performance for so long and well, I was really surprised when you said yes so, I guess I'm just trying to say that you've made me really happy tonight...and you look really nice"  
>Ezra's gentle charisma and gentle lips overlooked the tears of nights before and remembered the silky corners of my heart.<br>Corners in which I met him, and every day there was something crazy-good about my personality and then he laughed because my quirks stitched him together after bad days of impulsive ex-girlfriends reminding him of soothing nights, but I was there. Our sadness melted once in a while.

"It's nothing, I mean, you're my friend, it's the least I can do"

And he tagged along the one relevant word.

"Friend..." Please, appreciate me, it's all some endearing eyes should be.  
>What should you be, Syaoran?<p>

Why are you back here? Have I not cried enough? Is there a piece of your loneliness that may only suit my own?  
>Is there a home in your heart that can't be warmed up without that indigo scarf I took from you?<p>

"Did you know emotions are the universal language?" His chestnut, tousled hair tempted my free hands.  
>He lay his head on my lap. We lay our thoughts in a field of green and curtains.<br>Our own life.

"Did you know I knew that already?"  
>I kissed his forehead because it was part of my response.<p>

"I forget you're smart..."

"No, you forget it's universal"

My universe exists with him.

_I'm waiting for that final moment _

_You say the words that I can't say... _

I'm sorry, Ezra.

_I'm going to perform. It's at a coffee shop called 'Rabbit's Delight' in downtown, two streets from Tomoyo's old loft. You can't miss it - Sakura _

I'm still in love with the city.

* * *

><p>Short, nearly pointless, just thoughts. Thank you for reading!<p> 


End file.
